How frightening would Nigel Farage’s foreign policy be?

The answer is not precisely clear since Reform has said virtually nothing about what its foreign policy would be, instead focusing on immigration and demonising foreigners.

The party’s manifesto has a short section on defence but it covers only a few issues, often vaguely.

Only a small number of specific policy changes from the current Labour government can be identified so far.

Let’s look first at these, and then consider the broader picture, which presents the far more worrying trend.

Scrapping the Chagos deal

One clear proposal by Reform is to slash the overseas aid budget to £1 billion a year from the current £14 billion. The party says it would spend around £750m a year to retain UK membership of international organisations such as the UN and World Bank, with the remainder spent on aid to Ukraine and “genuine disaster relief”.

Reform has been just as specific on the Labour government’s deal with Mauritius for the latter to assume sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. The party says it will scrap this agreement.

The UK removed the islanders from the territory in the 1970s to make way for a US military base, as Whitehall illegally created the “British Indian Ocean Territory”. The largest of the islands, Diego Garcia, acts as a launch pad for military interventions in the region.

Reform, like the Conservatives, describes this as “giving up sovereignty” although the Chagos Islands were never Britain’s to give away. Reform leader Nigel Farage has said: “Diego Garcia is probably the single most important thing that we give America right now. Without it, America does not have access to the Middle East, India and much else”.

Farage also dismisses the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) demanding the UK cease its control over the islands, saying this “has no force of legal power whatsoever”.

Richard Tice, one of Reform’s five MPs and its foreign policy spokesperson, informed parliament in May that the Chagos deal “is the worst ever deal in history by this country”.

He says that “when Reform wins the next general election, we will rip up this deal—tear it up—and stop all future payments” to Mauritius for the ongoing use of the base.

Ignoring international law

A Reform government would likely be contemptuous of international law since it has explicitly signalled this.

One MP, Danny Kruger, said in October that Reform would rewrite the UK’s ministerial code and the civil service code to prevent officials from having to obey the law.

The ministerial code refers to “the overarching duty on ministers to comply with the law, including international law and treaty obligations”.

Kruger has said that his “glaring objection” to the code “is that it requires them [ministers] to acknowledge international law in their decision-making. That is an immediate change we would make.”

All UK governments routinely ignore or violate international law in their foreign policy but Reform’s change would allow policy-makers to act even more lawlessly.

Bolstering the military

On defence, and consistent with its rejection of legal norms, Reform commits itself to introducing a new “Armed Forces Justice Bill” to “protect” servicemen and women “from civil law and human rights lawyers”.

This would presumably allow soldiers who have committed crimes overseas to escape prosecution, such as recent evidence showing the SAS killed Afghans in cold blood.

Reform will likely champion arms corporations just as much as Labour has in its strategy of seeing “defence as an engine of growth”. Reform says it will “introduce incentives and tax breaks to boost the UK defence industry” including for arms exports.

The party’s military spending plans are similar to Labour’s. Reform is committed to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence in year three of a Reform government and 3% of GDP within six years. (The Labour government will spend 2.5% of GDP in 2027, rising from the current 2.3%).

Reform’s manifesto also says it will recruit 30,000 more people into the army (from around 108,000 currently) and have a dedicated ministerial department for veterans.

It’s unclear how the party would approach the huge wastage in military spending and the vast amounts being allocated to offensive equipment and nuclear weapons.

Trumpian foreign policy advisors

Especially instructive as to Reform’s foreign policy is the appointment last month of Alan Mendoza as the party’s chief foreign policy adviser. A co-founder and director of the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), Mendoza says Reform “will restore us to the first rank of global powers where we belong”.

The HJS is a heavily pro-Israel pressure group closely aligned with the neo-conservative movement in the US and has had access to the highest levels of the American government and its intelligence community.

HJS’s statement of principles “gives two cheers for capitalism”, and supports a “forward strategy” to “assist those countries that are not yet liberal and democratic to become so”. This involves having a “strong military” and “expeditionary capabilities with a global reach that can protect our homelands from strategic threats”.

One of HJS’s founders, Matthew Jamison, denounced the organisation as a “monstrous animal” and a “deeply anti-Muslim racist organisation”.

Another Reform adviser is James Orr, an associate professor at Cambridge University who chairs the advisory board of a new Reform-linked think tank, the Centre for a Better Britain (CFABB), which was launched in September.

The Financial Times notes that the CFABB is “modelled on US pro-Trump think-tanks, such as the Center for Renewing America and the America First Policy Institute”. To the Telegraph, the CFABB’s “blueprint” is the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has set Donald Trump’s second term agenda.

Last month, Richard Tice said he had commissioned the CFABB to address “over-regulation” in the City of London.

Orr played a role in hosting the National Conservatism Conference in the UK in 2023 and has a close relationship with Trump’s vice president JD Vance. Orr is hard-line anti-abortion, publicly opposing it even in cases of rape and incest, and has described asylum seekers as “invaders”.

Farage has, of course, been one of Trump’s leading supporters in the UK and has regularly campaigned and fundraised for him. “For 10 years I have stood up and defended President Trump,” Farage told parliament proudly, earlier this year.

It is certain that a Reform foreign policy would continue the British tradition of slavishly following Washington.

Unequivocally pro-Israel

When in February this year Trump announced he wanted to take over Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera” of the Middle East, Farage responded: “I love that notion”.

He and Tice are extreme supporters of Israel and a Reform government can be expected to unequivocally back the apartheid state.

Farage denies Israel’s “genocide” and rejects halting UK arms supplies to the country. After the Labour government recognised a Palestinian state this September, Farage spoke personally to Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar to condemn the decision.

Farage has also opposed the issuing of an arrest warrant for Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu and acquiesced in the mass killing of Palestinians. He told GB News in May 2024: “Of course, there are civilian deaths in Gaza, and it is deeply regrettable and unfortunate, but I’m afraid that’s what happens in all forms of war”.

All Reform MPs share the party’s passion for the genocidal state. Tice visited Israel in September this year to meet Sa’ar and president Isaac Herzog. Another MP, Lee Anderson, visited with Conservative Friends of Israel in 2022 while Danny Kruger describes himself as a “as a strong supporter of Israel”.

After two years of Israeli slaughter in Palestine, the party recently set up a Reform Friends of Israel, mirroring similar Labour and Conservative groups.

Reform’s backing of Israel has also revealed its colours over the United Nations. Tice has posted that the organisation is a “master of misinformation”, along with the BBC, in ignoring claims that Hamas killed Gazans in aid queues.

In September, he accused UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher of “lying with absurd claims” concerning the “UN’s genocide smears” against Israel. Tice also tweeted about “many UN types who appear more pro Hamas”.

Open to military intervention

Would a Reform government be as much of a warmongering, interventionist force as Labour and the Conservatives?

On the one hand, Farage has said he “totally opposed” the Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011) wars. In 2014, he observed: “In almost every country in which the West has intervened or even implied support for regime change, the situation has been made worse and not better. This is true of Libya, Syria and of course Iraq.”

But this didn’t stop Farage saying four years later that regime change in Iran would be “absolutely the right thing”. This June, he even reportedly said about Iran that “hopefully they get wiped out very shortly”, adding that he wanted to get “rid of [the] bloody awful regime” in Tehran – comments which, if applied to Israel, would have troubled mainstream news editors somewhat more.

When the US and Israel illegally bombed Iranian nuclear sites in June this year, Farage and Tice, like Keir Starmer, welcomed the attacks.

Last July, Farage also met Reza Pahlavi, an opposition leader who is the son of the Iranian Shah overthrown in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and who wants regime change in Tehran. Britain, of course, helped put Pahlavi’s father in power in a coup in 1953; he subsequently ruled with an iron fist with British backing.

Farage tweeted about his meeting: “When will Starmer stand up to the Ayatollah and proscribe the IRGC?”, referring to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite military force that is loyal to the ruler. Pahlavi thanked Farage for opposing Iran’s “terror on British soil”.

Although once in power Farage might be inclined to continue the UK habit of bombing foreign countries at will, Reform voters are less inclined to want to see Britain take an “active role in world affairs” than those of other parties.

A poll released this month finds that fewer than half of Reform voters (46%) think an active role is extremely or very important, compared with majorities of Labour (70%), Green (74%) and Conservative (59%) voters.

Shifting views on Putin and Ukraine

Would Reform adopt the militaristic stances towards Russia of the Labour and Conservative parties, and potentially even drag the country into war with Moscow?

Farage was widely condemned as being sympathetic to Vladimir Putin in 2014 for saying that he “admired” the Russian president “as an operator”, which was compounded for some by Farage’s frequent appearances on Russian TV channel RT.

A decade on, however, he’s now calling Putin “a very bad dude” while Richard Tice refers to “the monstrous tyranny of that most evil villain, Putin”.

Farage’s statement last year that the West “provoked” the Russian invasion by NATO expanding eastwards is an obvious truth, for which he was widely condemned across the establishment political spectrum.

He now says, however, that Ukraine should join NATO, while strongly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and agreeing with the policy of freezing Russian assets to help Ukraine.

Farage’s stance on Ukraine has in effect been less militaristic than Labour or Conservative. He has stressed the need for a negotiated outcome to the war and a compromise peace deal.

Ukraine and the UK’s policy of seeking to reclaim all the territory taken by Russia could mean there were “no young men left in Ukraine”, Farage has said. He criticised Boris Johnson for wanting “both sides to fight to the death”.

Farage says he opposes sending “badged” British soldiers to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, but could support their presence in a UN peacekeeping force.

But the recent extraordinary case of Reform politician Nathan Gill, who was close to Farage, being imprisoned for taking bribes from Russia, has revived claims that Farage and his entourage are close to Putin and Russia.

The Reform leader’s sometime admiration for Putin probably aligns with the latters’ social conservatism and authoritarianism rather than with Russian foreign policy.

China, enemy number one

Reform has taken an especially strong stance on China. Farage sees competition with Beijing as “the biggest geopolitical struggle since the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago”. He even posted on X in 2020 that “the re-election of Trump is central to stopping China effectively taking over the world”.

Both he and Tice regard China as a “national security threat”, with Farage even comparing China’s increasing military naval capability to “the rapid growth of the German Navy before 1914 [which] was a very good indicator of the horrors to come”.

In this light, it’s no surprise that Reform welcomes the AUKUS military agreement between the US, Britain and Australia – widely seen as directed at China – which to Farage signals “the Anglosphere realigning to protect liberty and freedom in the world”.

Ominously, when it was revealed in 2022 that ex-RAF pilots had taken money to train the Chinese military, Farage posted on X this was “shameful” since “these are the pilots who, one day, we may be at war with”.

Tice claims that China is “slowly but surely getting its tentacles throughout all of our societies” and speaks of “the influence of the Chinese Communist regime in the heart of the British establishment”.

Reform’s stance on Beijing’s influence in the UK extends not only to the presence of Chinese spies in Britain and the country’s interest in UK nuclear reactors, but also to students. Tice argued in August that Reform’s policy “may be stopping all students, all visas, who knows what that might be, but a whole raft of sanctions.”

Would a Reform government press for massive Chinese reparations over Covid? Farage asserted in 2023 that “China must pay” the $50 trillion in reparations for the Wuhan lab leak that he asserts caused Covid, as demanded by Donald Trump.